Our Bahamian Adventure as middle-age Grandparents is understandably different from when we were newly married, beginning our family and on our honeymoon adventure to Jamaica 31 years ago.

We’re reminded of how awful young love can be as we’ve observed two boatloads of young ‘uns quit in mid-adventure out of young love drama. In retirement, we don’t question or doubt or test our love. We just laugh a lot. We conspire. We strategize the best way to squeeze the most out of the day. We don’t need to go over all that stuff from our childhoods anymore. Our conversations are more here and now. Its almost like our snorkeling behavior (point! Squeeze hands! Nod! Squeeze hands!!) has expanded to become the way we are in general.

Like right now, our entertainment is a young rasta who is piloting a boat he doesn’t know how to anchor. I’m posting while watching him panic, dump anchor, power right over his anchor, throw out second and third anchors, slam into reverse, then power forward. “Stop!” I yell, and he kind of listens, but then he overpowers and drags all the anchors and his boat almost into the sailboat behind him. Albert and I squeeze hands, point, nod, squeeze! Look at that! We still try to intervene with life, but often the best we can do is shout out warnings.

Albert and I have always loved snorkeling and swimming together. The Abacos has the swimming and snorkeling of our dreams, absolutely breathtaking clear blue water sandy beaches, abundant complex fisheries, healthy beautiful coral reefs. On Manjack, we hiked a beautiful mile or so long trail to the most beautiful beach I’ve ever experienced. We swam and swam. On the way back Albert wanted to walk slow so that he could take pictures and not sweat. I wanted to walk fast to give the dogs and myself a well rounded workout. We each did what we felt like doing, of course! Did we really used to argue over our walking speed? I swam back to the boat and Albert rowed. We work as a team better than ever.

Right now, we’re in Green Turtle Cay, Black Sound. We came in here for protection from a strongish Norther coming through now. We hope the rasta kid’s enormous power boat doesn’t drag on us. We’ve had conch fritters for lunch, and great conversations with the woman who made them. She told us that the island school here goes til 5th grade, like on Peaks Island, and then the kids go to the mainland ( Great Abaco Island). We will volunteer at the school while we’re here.

Albert is responsible for dinner tonight. I’m so glad we were fully stocked when we got here, because though we found a few tiny grocery stores here, one squash is $12.50! Fortunately we still have squash from our garden on board, and I’ve learned how to combine dried seaweed super well with our potato recipes! Our boat has more food stores than the food stores!

Other things we are thinking about: there sure is lots and lots of plastic trash that washes up. The USA should probably chip in to pay for some of that clean up. Also, there are lots of no see ums.

And while this is a great place for wealthy vacationers, it’s a challenging, expensive, environmentally vulnerable fragile place for families trying to raise children. And there are loads of beautiful kids here, playing basketball, braiding hair, playing house, skipping along the waterfront wall.

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About Jenny Ruth Yasi

author, sailor, animal trainer,rally, agility and freestyle competitor, owner/proprietor Whole Dog Camp, now located in Freeport, Maine. For 31 years we lived on Peaks Island Maine. Now we are sailing with our 2 dogs in the Bahamas, and will return to Maine in 2017

4 Responses to Bahamas Babe

What a delightful picture you paint! You’re making me wish we were headed across this year as well, but we are learning much about cruising and mostly loving it on this side. We spent three nights on a mooring of St. Augustine and really enjoyed it, made new friends and I gqve them a number at an Irish jam session at a bar called “Annie O’Malley’s – great fun!

Yay! So glad you’re having fun in St. Augustine! It was interesting for us too, very unique and a fun stop! just a bit too transient and urban for our dream this year! Bahamians here, they’ve lived here all their lives, and they count back how many generations! Many! I see parallels between this community and the Peaks Island community, so I guess I am drawn to this for the ways it helps me have that perspective on where we have come from. St Augustine was just too foreign for me! We loved the tea and herb shop there! We got dried chives and mushrooms and use them a lot! Also hibiscus teas! Great shop! Also we loved the pastries we got at The Columbia restaurant! Just picture us here itchy from no see ums! I’m not complaining as much as I could about itchiness!!

And we missed both those places! See, we need to stay much longer in one spot, but we’ve got such a need to MOVE that we find we stop being present where we are after a bit, and have to launch again. Young cruisers, I uses – we just don’t know how to lime!